Writing for a
Visible Audience: A Study of Writing for Class Publication
Markus Budiraharjo
A growing
body of research in the area of the writing process demonstrates that in
contrast with expert writers, novice writers generally lack three sets of
knowledge: strategic, declarative, and procedural. Briefly, lacking the three
sets of knowledge means that novice writers inevitably encounter some of all of
the following constraints: inability to identify the possible audience,
insufficient topical knowledge, unfamiliarity with lexico-grammatical
choices, unfamiliarity with basic, conventionalized text structures (genres) or
discourse repertoire, inability to exercise voice as self-representation, and
inability to keep the writing assignments in authentic, not contextual, and
thus unchallenging, especially when the writing process is merely considered as
evaluating students’ language performance and the sole audience of the writing
assignment is the teacher. This paper sets to report a classroom-based study
concerning a writing assignment technique for class publication. Thirty-one
junior students (of semester V) were asked to collaborate to make a wall
magazine whose themes were of their own choices. One major question was set
forward: what were students able or unable to develop through collaboration of
writing for publication? In contrast with the cognitive view, which perceives
the writing process at the individual level, this study is intended to portray
the potentials and drawbacks of the social-constructivist view, which attempts
to develop an understanding of social context within which the writing process
is embedded and of the social process of writing.
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Budiraharjo, M.
(2004, April). Writing for a visible audience: A study of writing for class
publication. Paper presented at the RELC
International Seminar on Approaches to
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